Falstaff is a comic opera in three acts by the Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi. The Italian-language libretto was adapted by Arrigo Boito from the play The Merry Wives of Windsor and scenes from Henry IV, Part 1 and Part 2, by William Shakespeare. The work premiered on 9 February 1893 at La Scala, Milan.
Roméo et Juliette is a symphonie dramatique, a large-scale choral symphony by French composer Hector Berlioz, which was first performed on 24 November 1839. The libretto was written by Émile Deschamps, and the completed work was assigned the catalogue numbers Op. 17 and H. 79. It is based on Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet; it is regarded as one of Berlioz's finest works, and it is among the most original in form. The score is Berlioz's most comprehensive and detailed programmatic piece.
La clemenza di Tito, K. 621, is an opera seria in two acts composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to an Italian libretto by Caterino Mazzolà, after Pietro Metastasio. It was started after most of Die Zauberflöte, the last of Mozart's principal operas, had already been written. The work premiered on 6 September 1791 at the Estates Theatre in Prague.
Sly, ovvero La leggenda del dormiente risvegliato is an opera in three acts by Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari to an Italian libretto by Giovacchino Forzano, based on the Induction to Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew. It was premiered at La Scala in Milan in 1927.
Le cinesi is an opera in one act, with music composed by Christoph Willibald Gluck. The Italian-language libretto was by Pietro Metastasio, and he described it as a componimento drammatico. This libretto had first been set by Antonio Caldara in 1735. For Gluck's rework, the piece is often considered as an azione teatrale, even though Metastasio and the composer both retained the original designation. The work was first performed for the Austrian royal family at the Schloss Hof on 24 September 1754, on the occasion of the visit of the Empress Maria Theresa to the household of Saxe-Hildburghausen.
Tarare is an opéra composed by Antonio Salieri to a French libretto by Pierre Beaumarchais. It was first performed by the Paris Opera at the Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin on 8 June 1787. Salieri also reworked the material into an Italian version retitled Axur, re d'Ormus with libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte, which opened in Vienna in January 1788.
Il mondo della luna, Hob. XXVIII:7, is an opera buffa by Joseph Haydn with a libretto written by Carlo Goldoni in 1750, first performed at Eszterháza, Hungary, on 3 August 1777. Goldoni's libretto had previously been set by six other composers, first by the composer Baldassare Galuppi and performed in Venice in the carnival of 1750. It was then adapted for Haydn's version of the opera, which would be performed during the wedding celebrations of Count Nikolaus Esterházy, the younger son of Haydn's patron, Prince Nikolaus Esterházy, and the Countess Maria Anna Wissenwolf. It is sometimes performed as a singspiel under its German title Die Welt auf dem Monde.
Les Danaïdes is an opera by Antonio Salieri, in five acts: more specifically, it is a tragédie lyrique. The opera was set to a libretto by François-Louis Gand Le Bland Du Roullet and Louis-Théodore de Tschudi, who in turn adapted the work of Ranieri de' Calzabigi. Calzabigi originally wrote the libretto of Les Danaïdes for Christoph Willibald Gluck, but the aged composer, who had just experienced a stroke, was unable to meet the Opéra's schedule and so asked Salieri to take it over. The plot of the opera is based on Greek tragedy and revolves around the deeds of the mythological characters Danaus and Hypermnestra.
La fiera di Venezia is a three-act opera buffa, described as a commedia per musica, by Antonio Salieri, set to an Italian libretto by Giovanni Gastone Boccherini.
Amica is an opera in two acts by Pietro Mascagni, originally composed to a libretto by Paul Bérel. The only opera by Mascagni with a French libretto, it was an immediate success with both the audience and the critics on its opening night at the Théâtre du Casino in Monte-Carlo on 16 March 1905. Mascagni himself conducted the performance. The opera had its Italian premiere on 13 May 1905 at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome.
Sir John in Love is an opera in four acts by the English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams. The libretto, by the composer himself, is based on Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor and supplemented with texts by Philip Sidney, Thomas Middleton, Ben Jonson, and Beaumont and Fletcher. The music deploys English folk tunes, including "Greensleeves". Originally titled The Fat Knight, the opera premiered at the Parry Opera Theatre, Royal College of Music, London, on 21 March 1929. Its first professional performance was on 9 April 1946 at Sadler's Wells Theatre.
Il re is a novella or opera in one act and three scenes by composer Umberto Giordano to an Italian libretto by Giovacchino Forzano. The opera premiered at La Scala in Milan on 12 January 1929.
Adelia, o La figlia dell'arciere is an opera in three acts by Gaetano Donizetti. The Italian libretto was written partly by Felice Romani and by Girolamo Maria Marini, a part-time poet who had achieved notability the previous year with Otto Nicolai's Il templario. The opera premiered at the Teatro Apollo, Rome on 11 February 1841.
Medea is an opera in three acts composed by Giovanni Pacini to a libretto by Benedetto Castiglia. It premiered on 28 November 1843 at the Teatro Carolino in Palermo, conducted by the composer with Geltrude Bortolotti in the title role. The libretto is based on the plays Medea by Euripides and Médée by Pierre Corneille.
Vincenzo Calvesi was an Italian operatic tenor and impresario. A skillful lyric tenor, he began his career performing in opera houses in Italy during the 1770s. He was active in Dresden in 1782 to 1783 and then spent most of his time performing in Vienna from 1785 to 1794. He is best remembered today for creating the role of Ferrando in the world premiere of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Così fan tutte in 1790. That same year the Viennese publication Grundsätze zur Theaterkritik described him as "one of the best tenors from Italy…with a voice naturally sweet, pleasant and sonorous." He was later active in Rome as an impresario up until 1811.
Renaud is an opera by Antonio Sacchini, first performed on 28 February 1783 by the Académie Royale de Musique at the Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin in Paris. It takes the form of a tragédie lyrique in three acts. The French libretto, by Jean-Joseph Lebœuf, is based on Cantos XVII and XX of Torquato Tasso's epic poem Gerusalemme liberata and, more directly, on the five-act tragedy by Simon-Joseph Pellegrin, Renaud, ou La suite d'Armide, which had been set to music by Henri Desmarets in 1722 and was intended as a sequel to Lully's famous opera Armide. According to Théodore Lajarte, Lebœuf was helped by Nicolas-Étienne Framery, the regular translator of Sacchini's libretti.
Gloria is a tragic opera in three acts by Francesco Cilea with an Italian libretto by Arturo Colautti. A variation on the Romeo and Juliet story and set in 14th century Siena, the libretto is based on Victorien Sardou's 1874 play La Haine (Hatred). The opera premiered on 15 April 1907 at La Scala conducted by Arturo Toscanini with Solomiya Krushelnytska in the title role. Gloria was a failure at its premiere when it was withdrawn after two performances and fared little better in the 1932 revised version, although there have been two late 20th century revivals. It proved to be Cilea's last staged opera. In the 43 years following the premiere of Gloria he worked on two or three further operas which were never performed and continued to compose chamber and orchestral music.
Las bravías is a zarzuela in one act and four scenes with music by Ruperto Chapí. The work uses a Spanish language libretto by Carlos Fernández Shaw and José López Silva that is based on Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew. The opera premiered on 12 December 1896 at the Teatro Apolo in Madrid. Excerpts from the opera were recorded by tenor José Carreras, conductor Enrique García Asensio, and the English Chamber Orchestra in 1975 for Brilliant Classics.
Louis Clapisson was a French composer and violinist. He composed numerous art songs as well as 22 operas, largely in the opéra comique genre. In his later years he was a professor of harmony at the Paris Conservatory and the curator of the conservatory's museum of musical instruments, many of which had come from his own large collection.
